Dozens of local Jews gathered to observe a Service of Remembrance, or Zachor, at the Wall of Remembrance memorial at Alliance Cemetery.

While Yom HaShoah is a day of great global significance, it evokes a special sentiment in the hearts and minds of Jews in the areas of Vineland and Pittsgrove Township; once, this area was known for its large number of Holocaust survivors who settled here in the years following World War II.

"This area once had one of the largest per-capita percentages of Holocaust survivors in the the United States," said Steven Schimmel, Executive Director of the Jewish federation of Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem Counties, who sponsor the local Yom HaShoah observance.

According to Schimmel, Pittsgrove in particular was a region of opportunity for Jewish immigrants from Europe in the years after the war, offering a long-established and vibrant Jewish community.

In 1994, that community came together to build the Wall of Remembrance, an emotionally-evocative monument erected to serve in perpetuity the memory of those millions of souls who perished in the Nazi's programs of extermination.

For those who come yearly to observe the ceremony, preserving that memory is of highest importance.

"I think that considering what is taking place today in the Middle East
and Europe, and the overt anti-Semitism against the Jews of Ukraine...
and not to mention the recent violence at the Jewish Center in Kansas
City, that Yom HaShoah is a reminder that we can never be too vigilant, that we must support Israel, and we must continue to teach the lessons of the Holocaust," Schimmel said.

Schimmel, a younger man, is tasked with the responsibility of helping to preserve the memories of the Holocaust for the current generation and for every generation to come. In that task he is fortunate to have among his community so many who witnessed directly the horrors of the Nazis.

One such man is Rabbi Dr. Murray Kohn, 85, of Vineland. He is one the few Holocaust survivors who remain of this world.

"I was on the committee that built this monument," Kohn said of the Wall of Remembrance. "And so, I take great honor in it. In this area there were so many survivors, now so few are left. We prospered here, and our roots are here."

Kohn was only 12 when his family was rounded up and taken to the concentration camp at Auschwitz. One of the numbers engraved into an arm holding aloft an eternal flame matches the number tattooed into Kohn's flesh more than 70 years ago.

Eighty members of his family were murdered in Auschwtiz, gassed to death and burned to ashes in the fires of the crematoria, among them his mother and his seven-year-old sister.

His father, two cousins and an uncle, along with Kohn himself were all who survived.

To this day he remembers vividly, and accounts vividly, the horrors that he witnessed in his two and half years a prisoner there. He remembers the casual brutality of his captors, the despair of being hungry and having no food.

He remembers even the sight of Allied planes overheard in the closing days of the war, and the common wish among the captive Jews that the warplanes would unload their bombs on the remaining prisoners there and end their suffering.

Kohn returns to Auschwitz when he can, to remember. Recently, he took his daughter and his grandchildren, so that they too might know and remember. While they were there, they dug a small amount of ash from the grounds.

Before Sunday's ceremony, those ashes were interred in the Kohn family plot of Alliance Cemetery, next to the memorials marking the grave of Rabbi Kohn's wife and father, in ground consecrated for the memory of those of whom only ashes remain.

"We survived because the rest of them are ashes in Auschwitz. We observe; we live with their memories."

Kohn's teenage grandson, Alexander Kohn-Pettry, buried the ashes in the shadow of his great-grandfather's grave while his grandfather intoned: "You see the names of my family here, so it is a family grave. These ashes are symbolic of their own.

"May you rest in peace with all of our people, and bring us the real redemption of the world."

For young Alexander, the trip to Auschwitz was a way to connect directly with his inherited duty of remembrance.

"Even though I am a teenager, I am always remembering my background," he said. What I saw there was one of the most disturbing things in the world... I don't think any book or movie can sum it up.

I've been hearing about the Holocaust since the day I was born, and it has always haunted me. Those ashes.... No words can sum up how much they mean to me."

Following the brief ceremony at the Wall of Remembrance, those gathered headed to Beth Israel in Vineland to mark another year of community remembrance and continuing vigilance.